The Military History of the First World War: An Overview and Analysis - Professor David Stevenson

well i'm tempted to start off by saying that this is impossible to give an overview of the military history of the first world war in just under an hour um and i sort of drew my breath in a bit when gresham college invited me to do it but i'll try what i can't do of course is begin to do justice to the essence of what the military history was all about which was a millions of individual tragedies quoting carl von clausewitz the prussian theorist in the 19th century war as an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will the essence of it is destruction of property and killing maiming capture of human beings and these things happened on an unprecedented scale between 1914 and 1918. what i will try to do is to give a sort of framework for trying or beginning to understand why these things happened why the form the war took the form and the forms that it did and also to try to convey a bit some of the findings of the intensive research that's gone on into these topics particularly over the last three decades really since the opening of the military archives of the main belligerent countries the other thing i want to say is that i'm going to talk primarily about the western front in france and belgium but of course this was a global conflict and i will try to make reference to other theaters as well and also to say something about the war at sea because these things all of course interconnected the western front was not fought out in isolation from everything else the other thing i want to say as you'll see and why i put this up at the start is i'll try to divide it into three phases these are essentially phases based on the experience of the western front though they have some applicability i think to the war as a whole their phases of unequal length but the first thing to look at is the relatively mobile campaigning of 1914 why the initial war plans failed secondly i want to move on to the dreadful middle period of the war this is probably the period that's most urgently vividly remembered the stalemate period of trench warfare months-long attrition battles between 1915 and 1917 and then thirdly and perhaps less well-known is the last phase of the war in 1918 when there's a partial return to a war of movement or at least semi-movement and that's also the year of allied victory so like all stories in a way this is a story with a beginning and a middle and an end except that it wasn't really an end in 1918 it was a rather inclusive inconclusive downbeat termination and i'll try to suggest some of the reasons for that as well why the allied victory was undoubtedly a victory but less complete than many people in the allied countries and governments had hoped so those three phases then war of movement movement stalemate return to movement and also the origins the reasons for the allied victory and the nature of that victory those are the two big continuous threads and themes that i'll try to follow as i work through this story well you're an audience i think many of you are old enough to remember ajp taylor so there he is with a characteristic quotation that the first world war had begun imposed on the statesman of europe by railway timetables the inflexibility of railway timetables we've already had a lecture i think on the origins of the war and i know this is part of a series of lectures that gresham college are running and one of the essential elements in understanding why the war broke out in the first place is still the role of military plans peacetime strategic planning was something that was relatively new in europe if you go back into the 19th century at the time of the crimean war for example the british and french had first decided to declare war on russia and fern thought about how they were actually going to fight the war they didn't go into it with a pre-arranged war plan in 1914 of course all the powers did go into the conflict with pre-arranged war plans um and there are a couple of things i think that taylor said were misleading number one the plans were much more flexible than he supposed and all this quotation suggests just to give an indication of that by 1914 the french were already on their 17th plan since they'd started planning process and the russians were on plan 19 in fact they were on plan 19 revised and about to go on to plan 20 in the september of 1914 and the germans had a rolling plan we often hear about the schlieffen plan but the germans actually revise their plan every year on an annual cycle like a kind of modern business corporation the other thing that we know and this is something else has come out of recent research is that it's not true that most military chiefs expected the war to be over by christmas maybe some of the politicians did and certainly the politicians said so and probably the ordinary european public expected it was going to be a matter of weeks but most military chiefs chiefs of the general staff strategic planners envisioned a conflict that would last at least 18 months perhaps two years that's true that nobody expected a war that was going to last five years and be as devastating as it turned out to be so the plans are more flexible and the planner's assumptions more realistic than we used to think but nonetheless in the summer and autumn of 1914 all of the belligerence plans almost without exception failed and that's the first reason why the war takes the form it does that the initial war of movement doesn't last for more than a couple of months now the best place to start looking at that is the german war plan there's been a long debate about this and people may want to ask me about this afterwards it's best not to refer to just the schlieffen plan um it's this if you want to call it something you either call it the german war plan or the schlieffen mulker plan because helmut von mulker the younger who was the chief of the general staff from 1905 onwards made major changes to the plan that had been left to him by uh alfred von schlieffen who is the german chief chief of strategic planning from 1890 to 1905. but you see the essence of it the germans envisaged that it would be a war on two fronts and the way they would win such a war if they could was to move the bulk of their army at least two-thirds of their field army would go to the west to try to defeat the french quickly and the only way in which the germans thought they could do that was to go through belgium this is why the lines on the map as you can see are going through the plane of belgium to the north of the forested area and hills of the ardennes and avoiding what you can see marked in black i think towards the bottom of the map which are the modern fortresses that the french constructed on their border with germany there were fortresses in belgium but they had not been kept up to date and the germans rightly thought that those fortresses could relatively quickly be smashed by the germans mobile heavy artillery so that's the essence of the german plan which its gestation period goes back to more than 10 years before the war but is more or less implemented in that form in 1914 while the germans are advancing through belgium the french and you can see the blue lines on the map are attacking into alsace loren the territories they'd lost in 1871 and into belgium into the ardennes though they only go into belgium after the germans have first violated it it's a neutrality and the belgian the french are driven back with very heavy losses there you see a picture rare picture of the german invasion of belgium rather remarkable gives you a feel of what the first days of the war were like for the advancing german troops it almost looks like a summer holiday hike isn't it it wasn't going to stay like that of course for very long the map here shows the after the german victories in the opening battles the so-called battles of the frontiers uh in late august of 1914 the french fall back you can see and so does the small british expeditionary force after the battle of mons on the 23rd of august which was centenary of course that we recently commemorated the british and the french all falling back to the east of paris that line gives you an indication of the allied retreat but while that retreat is going on the french commander joseph joffr is using the time that he gains by retreating to move forces by rail from the east of his line towards the center which means that by mid-september or by the 9th of september the french are in a position to counter-attack the first battle of the man and drive the germans back so once the germans retreat the trench stalemate begins to form from september onwards why do the germans retreat the germans are probably closer in september 1914 to winning the war than they were ever going to be again so it's not surprising that this has been a controversial question if the war was going to end quickly the only way in which it could end would be with the germans winning it there was no chance of the french winning it in a couple of months all the russians the only people who might have been able to do it with the germans though even that i think was highly improbable but the reason why the germans actually fail are partly due to mistakes in command here's helmut von mulker the younger who i've mentioned already the chief of the general staff so the chief primary german peacetime planner between 1906 and 1914 the man who's de facto commander of the german army once the war breaks out you can see a perhaps the haunted look in his eyes and that gives an indication to the man's personality this is someone who was unsure of himself lacked confidence wasn't sure that germany could actually win the war though he pressed nonetheless for germany to start it in 1914 because he believed by 1917 the chances of winning would be even less and during the crisis he at the first few weeks of the war he made a number of clearly mistaken decisions one was to move four divisions eastwards to deal with the russians he didn't actually need to do that but that weakened his right flank the key first and second armies that were moving westward through belgium towards the marm he also made a decision at the battle of the man itself to delegate the decision to retreat to a staff officer colonel richard hench remember mulker is back in luxembourg 150 miles behind the front line he isn't aware he isn't in touch with what's going on so he sends a staff officer to make the decision and the staff officer seems to have called the decision wrongly the germans didn't actually need to pull back but they did now what's interesting of course even if the germans had not pulled back they were neither on the verge of capturing paris nor of forcing france to surrender the failure of the mulk shrief and mulker plan is partly due to mistakes but the probability was always that it was going to fail and there are a number of reasons for this one is the germans that underestimated the french this is joseph joff the french commander you can see perhaps the difference in character and demeanor between him and molca this is someone who throughout the man campaign slept soundly ate heartily regularly interfered with his subordinates decisions was kept in touch with the commanders of the front because the french had a communications advantage the french could use cables and telegraph an intact communication system to communicate with their front line commanders the germans couldn't and joff was also a railway expert background was a colonial soldier and engineer so he was accustomed to planning railway movements which were very important in 1914 moving troops from the areas of the front where they were not needed to the areas where they were another point to make is that unlike 1870 the franco-prussian war the previous great western european war that had been a shambles for the french but this time round the french army was mobilized swiftly and was almost as big as the german one the germans were trying to defeat the french when they had barely a numerical advantage over the french british and belgians combined so the french army mobilized swiftly jeff kept his nerve had a fallback plan which he implemented and the french had invested heavily in their railway system so the french not only had access to an intact telegraph and community and cable system of communications they also commanded a dense network of railways in northeastern france whereas the germans by the time of the battle of the man in september 1914 the leading german units were 100 miles ahead of their rail heads and in between they were having to move supplies munitions by lorry but they only had about four thousand lorries most of which broke down and horses but tens of thousands of the horses died along the roads leading to the manned front so the germans lacked the fodder for them and lacked proper veterinary care so if you look at the logistics of it which schlieffen had not really considered seriously the german plan the odds were always against it given the preparations that the french have been making in peace time but there's also something more fundamental which is going to shape the entire course of the war and this is the 19th century revolution in firepower now this is part of it the magazine rifle i've given an example of the french lebel rifle uh modeled comes in in the 1880s soon after the germans adopt their mauser the british bring in their lee enfield in the mid-1890s now the key feature of this is a magazine which is clipped in to the body of the stock of the barrel just in front of the trigger you can see it most clearly in the middle of the rifles here these fire smokeless powder infantry well-trained infantry can fire a lebel rifle or a magazine rifle up to 15 times a minute from a range of half a mile it's far more formidable weapon than the muskets that had preceded it and they also using smokeless powder so when they fire it they do not give their location away the second thing of course is the machine gun a vickers machine gun in action in 1917 here british troops operating it now that could fire across a range of 2 500 yards in other words well over a mile and it could as it traversed to and from side to side it could fill an arc 500 yards wide with flying lead now we often think about machine guns in connection with the first world war but actually 58 it's estimated or almost two-thirds of the casualties the deaths on the western front were actually due to artillery fire um even more important than the rifle and the machine gun was the field gun the modern field gun the prototype being the french 75 millimeter brought in again in the 1890s but rapidly copied by other european armies the british standard field gun was the 18 pounder for example the germans had a 77 millimeter this with the practice crew could fire up to 20 rounds a minute of shrapnel shells or high explosive the predecessor of the 75 millimeter could fire four rounds a minute um it didn't need to be reload to be repositioned every time it fired that's the key thing it's got a hydraulic piston attached to the barrel which absorbs the recoil of the gun so it doesn't have to be repositioned after firing each round so you can just fire and fire and fire and on the battle of the mar and that's what the french did they fired off hundreds of thousands of 75 millimeter field gun shells so this is the firepower revolution and on balance it favors the defender over the attacker and if we move to other fronts in 1914 we see this pattern replicated now in the east i've put up a picture of eastern europe you see here the basic geography of eastern europe is the russian poland here sticking out with germany in the north here's east prussia and to the south is austria-hungary germany's main ally here's the austrian province of galicia so the main fighting takes place between russian poland east prussia and galicia now what's interesting in east prussia the russians face um much smaller forces they have the germans have only about a tenth of their field army here the austria-hungarian army is smaller than the russian one and is sending troops also down south against serbia where they're quickly repelled in two invasion attempts in the autumn of 1914 so the russians should have had a huge numerical advantage but what they do is divide their army so they attack both austria and germany and then they divide it again because in invading east prussia they send one army up here from the south and one army coming in here from the east and this means that in 1914 in east prussia the tables are rev the situation is reversed from the situation in france it's now the germans they're defending eighth army which has the advantage of interior rail lines at intact cables cable communications it's the russians advancing along sandy tracks through forests and lakes and swamps who do not have the transport advantages and also have to communicate with each other by wireless and the germans of course are able to intercept and read the unencrypted russian wireless messages so this shows you what happens the german army shuttles down first to encircle the russian second army down here at tanenburg and then goes up north and drives the russian first army out of east prussia at the battle of the missouri and lakes now once you do this you can see you compare the man on the one hand with east prussia on the other you begin to see how there is an almost invariable advantage in favor of the defender one of the few exceptions to this rule is in the south in galicia excuse me where here the russians are able to defeat the austrians and overrun a large part of austrian territory including the austrian breadbasket here in galicia that's what that shows if you like is that the offensive it's still possible to conquer territory but only if you have a very large numerical advantage and even in that case once the germans help the austrians then the russian advance is halted now as we come to the end of 1914 the fighting fronts are stabilizing so after the battle of the man in september the so-called race to the sea which is rather a misleading name takes place and the western front forms through piketty artois and up into western belgium by the beginning of november the first battle of eeps being fought here that process is essentially complete what's important to understand is that it leaves the germans in possession of nearly all of belgium and about one twentieth of metropolitan france including key industrial areas in french logan down here and also up here around uh lille and the french manufacturing area and northern coal field that means that to end the war on favorable terms the allies will need to drive the germans out of those territories which turns out of course to be forbiddingly difficult now it's true that on the other hand by 19 if you look at the global picture by 1915 the allies have destroyed nearly all the german warships operating outside the north sea have severed the germans and central powers trade links with the outside world and the allies are in a position to bring in resources and manpower from all over the globe just to give one example of how soon that applies the british have a 50-mile sector here in the north in belgium and northern france in the winter of 1914-15 one-third of that is held in that winter by troops from india already been brought to fight in the west 80 000 canadians are training to move to the front have arrived already from canada in the british isles so in the long term resources may give the allies the longer term advantage the question is whether that will suffice given that the germans control these key areas of territory and that the german army is essentially a more effective efficient army consistently through almost the entire war than any of the armies that oppose it germans have the advantage of effectiveness and efficiency against allied superiority in numbers and resources so we move on now from the war of movement to the period of stalemate what i need to underline here is that by the end of 1914 both sides have already suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties it's actually during the initial phase of open warfare that the daily casualties are greatest just to give you one example the french army on the 23rd of august so right at the start of the war the 23rd of august the french army suffers 27 000 dead in one day so this shows you the impact of the new weapons on troops exposed in the open it's unsurprising that their immediate reaction as soon as possible in response to bursts of shrapnel over their heads in the open is to react by digging and trenches whatever their evil reputation which may well be deserved they saved lives they provided some protection men felt safer in them this is very clear if you read the memoirs of the period maybe people are writing in their letters and memoirs to reassure their families but a theme that keeps coming across is how once they're in trenches and particularly with their head below the parapet they feel themselves more or less protected against anything other than a shell directly landing on top of them so one of the outstanding new features of the war in 1915 is of course this 475 miles of opposing trench systems extending from the north sea to switzerland now there is some precedence in previous wars such as the earthworks trench fortifications and uh barbed wire and searchlights and machine guns around port arthur in the russo-japanese war of 1904-1905 but there's been nothing previously remotely on this scale it amazed people at the time and in some ways it's amazed people ever since british troops in the front line used to fantasize about walking along this system from end to end and hypothetically i suppose that would have been possible the germans dug in first in order to tighten their grip on the territory they'd conquered and to release troops for a drive into russia and of course their engineers knew what they were doing the german engineers tended to select crests of ridges and hills that afforded good artillery observation so as you'll know if you visited any of the western front battlefields repeatedly between 1915 and 1917 the allies were attacking uphill it's also no accident that the trenches stabilize in one of the densest dense most dense areas of railway network in europe this shows you the trench line of 1970 not very different from 1915 but beside it it it's it it stabilizes between two great railway networks the german one running down from the north sea through lille um here's the trunk railway moving across to mets with german fortification system fortification centre and then down to the east the allies have a trunk railway system running down from calais and bologne down to what through amnow the great railway junction towards paris and then out another railways trunk line leads out towards loren and towards the east so that both sides of course invest heavily in those railway systems and develop them as the war continues but what that means is that both sides can shuttle reinforcements laterally quickly and effectively to points of danger and they can do it faster than attackers can pick their way forward through no man's land particularly as by 1916 attackers are facing something like this of course this is an idealized diagram but this shows you how as the trench system becomes more complex and elaborate by 1916 trench lines typically trenches can comprise three lines and each line is three rows there's the front line the support trench and the reserve trench before the in the front line there will be machine gun posts there'll be dugouts 40 feet deep in the chalk soil of the sun for example where the water table is high as it was in flanders that was supplemented by concrete pill boxes by 1917 in the eap salient the germans have hundreds of concrete pill boxes lying behind the front now each behind here behind the reserve trench is the line of the field guns so machine guns at the front machine field guns at the rear now you need to multiply that by three yeah and think of a system that's extending back for five miles or more with intersecting communication trenches taken together as was shown time and again the attacking infantry found these obstacles too strong precondition for trench warfare of course was enormous numbers of men this is a tremendously labor-intensive system if you want to look at it in those terms typically 5 000 competents per mile of french the front but of course there were plenty of men the french german armies and by 1916 also the british army much bigger than in previous wars their losses from disease much lower remember right up until the south african war in 1899 to 1902 losses from disease were much higher than they were for combat wounds on the first in the first world war on the western front that changes they're not on other fronts advances in medicine also mean that most of the wounded would eventually return to combat duty the british army typically two-thirds or more of the wounded return to combat duty behind the lines the french and british bring in labourers from all over the world in tens of thousands and china from africa to build railways and move munitions and stores the germans use prisons of war both sides of course impose unremitting labor duties on the soldiers themselves as you know you'll know again if you've looked at the memoirs of this period what's striking is how much of the time was spent actually doing heavy duty laboring bringing stuff up to the front line digging trenches laying out barbed wire so but there are enough men to do all that and there's also enough munitions every army of course runs into shell shortages in the winter of 1415 but all of them accomplish production miracles certainly by 1916 in general even in russia or in italy the army's demands for shells are able to be met and also they're able to supply the armies all year round another big difference from previous wars is that in winter troops stay in the front line they don't retreat to winter barracks or bivouacs new technologies do not at first at any rate offer a way out one of the most notorious of the new technologies is poison gas initiated on the western front in 1915 though this picture is actually from april 1918 it shows germ british troops um temporally blinded actually most of them would recover their site after the german use of mustard gas in april 1918. mustard gas is a feature of the later part of the war to begin with in 1915 it was mostly chlorine and it was released from canisters so it depended on a favorable wind by 1916 chlorine had given way to phosgene as the standard gas used by the french and germans which was six times more lethal and was fired in artillery shells so by the end of the war the second half gas is typically delivered in artillery shells it's a form of artillery there's an alternative to high explosive but by 1916 already both sides have developed reasonably effective gas masks so what gas warfare does is add another dimension of horror to the fighting it doesn't actually kill nearly as many people as high explosive and shrapnel did but it slows everything down even more without giving the attacker an outstanding advantage and the same can be said about tanks here's an early british tank in action a mark one tank in action on the som battle of the somme in september 1916 don't forget also that the french were developing tanks pretty much in parallel to us and first used them in april 1917 but these are still used in very small numbers the tanks crawl forward barely more than walking pace they're extremely vulnerable to mechanical breakdown most break down in fact before they go into action once they do get to the front line they're very vulnerable to enemy shell fire and they're only used really before 1918 in dozens at most rather than hundreds so tanks are very much a nascent technology this means that the most promising technological solution really to trench stalemate is heavy artillery roughly heavy artillery means a caliber of six inches or more this is much for more formidable weapon then than the field gun these french 75 millimeter field gun which you think about it is about half that caliber um and the shell will be less than half the weight the explosive charge will be much less than a field gun that is in heavy artillery heavy artillery is in the end what was going to break the trench stalemate by 1918 particularly when directed by air power one of the things that enormously develops during the war is aerial reconnaissance each side takes tens of thousands of aerial photographs high resolution photographs of the other side and this is the main thing that aircraft do in the war before them tethered balloons but by 1718 aircraft are mainly used for reconnaissance and photography they do do ground attack and they also do strategic bombing german go to bombers bond london of course in 1917 1918 and british bombers bombed the rhineland much less effective than in the second world war the primary role of aircraft is in gathering information about where the enemy artillery batteries were located once they can do that and communicate the information to the heavy guns then you have a system that can destroy trench fortifications but it takes time takes a long time to manufacture thousands of heavy guns which is what is needed millions of shells and training hundreds of crews because operating these things is an extremely skilled task it's almost like a kind of industrial process by 1917 this is being done and it's already starting to make a difference by 1917 you can see the system beginning to free up and another change by 1917 particularly pioneer during the battle of the somme actually in 16 is the introduction of the creeping barrage which means that when infantry attack an enemy trench a curtain of fire is laid down that advances before them ideally from field guns and from machine guns which means that they are protected more or less until they are on top of their target combination of heavy artillery to silence the enemy guns and creeping barrage to silence the enemy machine guns turns out to be a very effective system but it does take a long time to achieve this some historians have argued that the british and french armies are on a so-called learning curve between 1915 and 1917 they're learning how to break through trench defenses and in many ways this is true i think but what it omits is first of course that the learning curve was extremely slow it was extremely costly and also that the german defenders are also on a learning curve and their defensive tactics have much changed by 1917 by 1917 the germans typically leave very few troops in the front line where they're most vulnerable to bombardment they concentrate most of their infantry in the support trenches further back with the intention of doing a prompt counter-attack once the allied advance has begun to lose momentum that's very effective for a while during 1917. anyway the point i want to get across here is that what we do not see in the middle period of the war is simply the kind of interminable repetition of an unvarying script it's not true there is a rapid change in military technology and tactics despite the western front static appearance it doesn't seem to move very much but underneath all this there is still a fundamental equilibrium german army throughout the middle period of the war deploys about a third of its strength in the east so it never has numerical superiority in the west until 1918. the allies have superior numbers but they do not have the germans military efficiency and they're trying to attack uphill against german defenses in a situation where the defenders have a natural advantage now we need to put what's happening on the western front in a broader context including the war at sea from 1915 onwards the allies are attempting to impose a total blockade stop all food medical supplies everything reaching the central powers but this takes a long time partly because germany as you can see from the map is able to continue to import from its neutral neighbors from the netherlands and from denmark both of which of course are big agricultural producers and very efficient it's not until about the middle of the war that the blockade really begins to bite another feature of the war on the other hand is the germans are very cautious in using their high seas fleet which they built up at such expense before the war their modern battleship fleet stationed essentially here in wilhelm's harvard and akeel and the baltic for most of the war the high seas fleet is deliberately kept in port avoids the risk of a head-on clash with the british gland grand fleet stationed up here in the orkneys because the german government wanted to keep their fleet in being as a means of pressure on the british in an eventual peace conference now there's one exception which is of course the battle of jutland on the 31st of may 1916 this is the one moment when the main battleship fleets of the two sides come into within firing range and they are within firing range of each other for 20 minutes before the german navy turns away and goes back to port now in the battle of jutland the germans inflict twice as much damage on the british as the british inflict on the germans but the conclusion that the high seas fleet command reaches is that this is they've had a very narrow escape and they must not run such risks again which means from now on the main german device against the british blockade will and allied blockade will be of course the submarine now submarines like tanks are a world are very new technology they predated the war by a bit but not very much as of 1914 the germans have only 27 of them but by the beginning of 1917 they have well over a hundred and by the beginning it's really not until the winter of 1916-17 that the germans have enough u-boats to do serious damage to allied shipping they're also hobbled not just by numbers of u-birds too few but also by american protests which they quickly run into of course after the sinking notorious sinking of the british line of the lusitania in may 1915 american protests against the way in which the germans wanted to conduct the submarine war what the germans wanted to pursue was unrestricted submarine warfare which means in other words torpedoing without warning anything afloat around the british isles and northern french waters or in the mediterranean be it an allied ship or a neutral ship be it a passenger liner or a merchant ship all to be sunk now the germans don't adopt unrestricted submarine warfare permanently until february 1917. by then they think they've got enough u-boats and they also think that it can prevail quickly enough to starve the british out so that it won't make any difference even if the americans come in now that's the key german mistake to put it mildly probably their biggest mistake beyond starting the war in the first place to understand why they did that you need to look at what's happening in the other theaters of the war and you need to move up from tactics to strategy now i've said i've talked quite a bit about trenches it's important to understand that trench is a characteristic not just to france and flanders but of also of almost every other land theatre of the war gallipoli after turkey comes in on the german side in november 1914 the french and british dominion forces try to break through and capture constantinople as we know that leads to a trench stalemate on the gallipoli peninsula when italy comes into the war on the allied side in may 1915 trenches form up here in the trentino and on the ozonzo river where the italians try to break through into austria-hungary and again are held allied troops are sent to here to macedonia in the autumn of 1915 another line of trenches forms in the balkans and finally in poland during 1915 the germans and austrians drive the russians back out of this polish bulge here but then another line of trenches forms in eastern poland though on the eastern front it was always more fluid more mobile than it was in the west partly because the line is as long as again it's about 500 miles but the size of the arm so sorry the line is about 1000 miles it's twice as long but with armies of about the same size so the density of troops per mile is about half of what it is in the western front but everywhere every front you look at the defenders have the tactical advantage so we need to look at strategy the big strategic story in 1915 as i just indicated the germans and austrians hold them western front with the minimum of forces while they drive east against the russians drive them out of poland and then the germans help the austrians to overrun serbia down here with assistance from bulgaria which comes in in september of 1915 so two big waves of german and austrian advances in the east and in the balkans intended of course to make the russians drop out of the war and sign a separate peace which zarnicalis ii refused to do while all of this is going on the allies lack coordination the french attacking mainly here to try to liberate their territory italians down here british main effort is down here yeah so as a kind of lack of coordination on the allied side in 1915 which gives the central powers the initiative and this 15 is a very successful year from them 1916 is not in 1916 the pattern changes and this is because of something called the shanti conference uh french high command headquarters at shanti northern france in december 1915 the allies decide to synchronize a number of offensives in the summer of 1916 they'll try to attack simultaneously to subject the germans and austrians to a combined squeeze that's the plan what happens instead is the germans preempt them by starting an attack at verdam uh in eastern france it's the germans who take the initiative in february 1916 and verdant is the first of the big attrition battles 1915 the big innovation is trenches 1916 the innovation is months long battle of the battles of attrition in confined spaces with enormous numbers of casualties running into the hundreds of thousands both sides generals adopt clear attrition strategies they will try to win by inflicting huge numbers of casualties on the enemy until they crack and the germans start to do this in verdana with a deliberate plan to inflict the maximum number of casualties by taking over a symbolic area of importance to the french in the hope that the french will exhaust themselves and counter attacks against the german artillery it's a very bloodthirsty rather chilling conception which actually has essentially failed the germans it becomes the battle becomes as damaging for germany as it does for france even before summer 1916 when the shanti offensives go into effect the british battle of the somme is part of this or anglo-french i should say battle of the psalm on the 1st of july running through to november but it's actually the russians who began this here's a still of course from the documentary the british documentary film on the battle of the psalm this is actually a reconstructed staged sequence in the film but almost all of the rest of that film was shown on the was filmed on the first of july 1916 but the shanti offenses the allied programmers summer offenses begins with a russian attack in the east and the russian so-called brusilov offensive um the russians advance about half of the austrian army facing them collapses and is either taken prisoner or becomes casualties the germans have to call off the battle of erdogan in order once again to assist the austrians there's a kind of pattern here repeatedly the germans have to call off operations in the west in order to send troops eastwards to deal with an emergency there and that's only the beginning because august 1916 romania comes into the war there's also an italian offensive the italians are able at last to make some progress and capture the town of garitsya so if you put all this together in the summer of 1916 i mean we tend to think of the battle of the some as a disaster and of course in many ways from the british perspective it was but the german leaders were extremely worried about the battle of the somme and the pressure their troops were under in the west especially as they were under pressure simultaneously in eastern europe what happens is there's actually a crisis in germany and a new team takes over um paul von hindenburg on the left eric ludendorff on the right with kaiser wilhelm the second there in the middle this is the new team that takes over the german army high command they change the tactics and they do manage to stabilize the situation by overrunning romania halting the russians and halting holding the allied advance on the somme to six miles but what they're afraid of is that in spring 1917 the allies will do the same thing again there'll be another synchronized offensive and as a result of that that's the context in which they decide the german army decides to back the german navy's rather desperate plan for unrestricted submarine warfare intended to starve the british out in five months the germans know that's virtually certain to bring america into the war but they calculate that the chances of breaking the british and making the allies surrender are so good that the americans entry will make no difference or no substantial difference it's a catastrophic miscalculation now of course on the allied side the allies were intending to carry on with synchronized offenses in the spring of 1917 the key reason why they don't is because of the russian revolution here's one of the last pictures we have of zara nicholas ii looking rather melancholy of course under guard after he had abdicated and the provisional government had come to power in russia to replace him but that revolution in russia meant the russians could no longer cooperate in the allied combined offenses what happens in 1917 is you move back to a position of rather uncoordinated allied attacks the french attack in april so-called novel offensive complete failure very quickly leads on to mutinies in the french army which it make it impossible to carry out further major offences for several months the british decide in spite of the russian revolution and the french mutinies partly actually because of them to persist with the third battle of eep this is a scene from september i think of 1917 chateau wood outside between july and november the british are attacking in belgium with the aim of breaking the trunk railway behind the german lines and capturing the ports of ostend and zaybrugger which were german u-boat bases so passchendaele as it becomes this battle is intended partly to deal with the german submarine menace though the real reason behind it is sir douglas hague the british commander believed that he could single-handedly defeat the german army he was extraordinarily overconfident even with the americans not coming in they british thought perhaps another 18 months even with the french largely out of the picture the british were extremely confident partly because of the tactical changes that i've talked about that they had the capacity to defeat the germans there's a bitter debate in london between the politicians and the military about this but in the end the politicians under the lloyd george's prime minister give the go-ahead for the battle to proceed the battle arguably damages the british army more than it does the german one so by the end of 1917 despite america's entry into the war america came in in april what america does is to keep the allies going financial help economic help naval help psychological help perhaps most important of all but the allies still at the end of 1917 seem no nearer to solving the fundamental problem of how to expel the germans from france and belgium without ruinous cost in lives and expenditure now when we move into 1918 and the third and final phase of the war the western front map looks very different remember how static it was between 1915 and 1917. this is how it looks between march and july of 1918 when there are five great german offensives so-called lutendorf offensives twice the germans advanced nearly 50 miles they threaten key british railway junctions at amyar and at azerbrook they get halfway to paris that's between march and july of 1918. between july and november the allies first overrun recapture the territory lost this shows the front line as it is late september 1918 when the allies launched a series of coordinated offensives and by 11th of november the armistice day they've got to this line here they've pushed the germans out of france almost altogether and they've overrun the western parts of belgium and that's the point where the ceasefire happens so both sides have learned to break through trenches not just the allies but also the germans and if you look at photographs of the 1918 fighting much of it is not actually in trenches much of it is in foxholes and in open fields even as during the second world war a lot of it looks like rather than what we think of as the somme or the fur deep the allied advance if slower is more sustained and it goes further so what lies behind this the russian revolution the second russian revolution remember the first revolution is the overthrow of czar nicholas the second the second is lenin and the bolsheviks seizing power um in november 1917. october by the old russian calendar followed by a ceasefire which enables the germans to move about half a million men from the east to the west so the germans regain a numerical majority on the western front and they have an incentive to use it quickly before the americans arrive in strength because remember as of march 1918 there are still only quarter of a million american combat personnel in france in europe ludendorff and hindenburg know this operation is a gamble but they believe it worth trying partly because of new artillery and infantry tactics what i've been talking about already but has taken a stage further by 1918 what the germans know how to do is to be able to they can work on calculating the trajectory of each gun in trials behind the lines so they no longer need to do ranging shots so they can start an artillery bombardment without any warning by surprise without prior preparation as long as they move the guns up secretly and conceal by night which they have some success in being able to do they also use enormous numbers of gas shells which they direct against the allied artillery to silence it and a creeping barrage there's ludendorff the architect of much of this to support assaults by the german storm troops these show german storm troops actually in italy where they broke through italian lines of the battle of caporetto in october 1917. but the principle on the western front then is not attacks in mass waves but small squads uh specialists equipped with portable machine guns grenades and flamethrowers who will bypass the opposing strong points and drive on as far and fast as possible supported by aircraft aircraft do ground attack they do some strafing what the germans do not have are tanks except a few british ones and they all captured british ones and they also have very few lorries only about a tenth of those possessed by the allies they are very seriously suffering from petrol and from rubber shortages and they're also desperately short of horses tens of thousands of whom died in 1917-18 on the german side because they didn't have the vets to look after them most of them died of mange and of also starvation and shortage of fodder so supply shortages which had hobbled the germans in 1914 in mobile warfare hobble them again in 1918 they can break through allied trenches but again and again those advances that i showed on the first map there run out of steam and impetus because of lack of logistical backup and while the germans are doing these offenses their army loses about one million casualties which they cannot replace whereas on the other hand the americans step up their troop shipments much faster to what they previously planned in response to this emergency the numbers of americans in france go up from quarter of a million in march 1918 to 2 million by november of 1918 when they actually outnumber the british here's a rare picture of an american troop convoy heading towards france in 1918 up to a quarter of a million americans cross each month in the summer of 1918. so the miracle advantage swings back in the allies favor the allies also have tactical advantages they too know how to use heavy artillery to break through trenches supported by aerial reconnaissance and they have the advantage of superior logistics that shows a british locomotive on the western front in 1918. the french railway system like the german railway system is wearing down by 1918 due to years of neglect but the british and americans supply tens of thousands of locomotives rolling stock and railway personnel which keep the system running and what the allies also have is tens of thousands of lorries fueled with american petrol they also now have hundreds of tanks is a british mark iv tank remember the previous one i showed you was a mark one these are generally not used however in mass they're generally used in relatively small numbers for infantry support so they're a kind of ancillary thing but the remember the germans don't have them and the tanks are very useful in helping the allies gain and maintain surprise finally the allies have a supreme commander ferdinand fosh again appointed in response to the emergency of march 1918 given coordination power over the allied forces and he devises a combined strategy i've shown you this map before but the essence of the strategy is number one clear the germans away from the allied trunk railways number two break through the german trunk railway which you can see here in green behind the german line paralyzed the german system of reinforcement and logistics and at the end of september 1918 the bulk of the german reinforcements and reserves are here envisaging an allied attack in loren when the allies attack further north and in the centre the german reinforcement system breaks down and it is actually on the 28th of september that hindenburg and ludendorff decide that germany must seek an armistice the other reason why germany why they decide that is because of news down in the balkans and these things happen simultaneously mid-september allied forces on the balkan front break through up the vada valley into serbia bulgaria surrenders this means that allied forces can separate off austria-hungary and germany on the one hand from turkey on the other and in addition they can get into romania around blue estee here was the main german source of oil that's now threatened and the germans know it so the balkans and the cent and the western front those two situations crack simultaneously the allies in the autumn of 1918 are also attacking in the south advancing into syria and the italians break through the austrian defenses here and four hundred thousand austrian troops surrender the battle of vittorio veneto austria hungary disintegrates as a political enemy now before i stop this allied advantage on tactics and technology rests of course on enormous achievements in munitions production most of it in britain and france these are the big producers of weapons and explosives in the first world war the americans provide steel and they provide oil and they provide money and loans but america is not the manufacturing heartland that it was going to be in the second world war american contribution is indispensable but the british and french are actually the manufacturing hubs the second precondition is command of the seas the main reason why the u-boats are introdu are defeated they're not the only one is the introduction of the convoy system in 1917 another thing almost equally important is the allies use their surviving ships more efficiently by turning them around faster in the ports and concentrating them on the north atlantic run so although they've lost an awful lot of ships to german submarines the amount of goods being landed in british ports in 1918 is actually higher than it had been in 1916. so munitions achievement manufacturing but also maritime seabourn supply these things are crucial in many ways the allied victory is a victory for superior organization and also of leadership wilder woodrow wilson david lloyd george george tomoso vittorio orlando provide effective leadership in what's become by 1980 in a contest between autocracies and democracies final this is a chart from showing german surrenders monthly to the british army on the western front and what you see is how it leaps up after august 1918. i want to underline this this is no longer the same army as it had been in 1916 and 1917 the german morale is crumbling from within very large numbers surrendering very large numbers deserting the german ordinary troops and their junior officers know the war is lost they know it before the high command decides to surrender at the end of september so i want to stress really coming back to sort of the great debate about the first world war yes the allies are more effective and the british french and americans all become more effective and all three of those groupings i should say british empire america empire american france all three of those make indispensable contributions to the victory but the victory comes in 1918 not just because of allied strengths but also because of german mistakes number one the submarine offensive which brings in the americans number two the ludendorff offensive offensives which do terrible damage to the german army once the germans go out onto the attack nonetheless there has been a military revolution by 1918. army officers today in the british army and i did a recent discussion with them they can recognize what armies are doing in 1914 combined operations of tanks aircraft and infantry and artillery very different from 19 1914 so there's the armistice and there i will stop you

Channel: Gresham College

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Keywords: gresham, gresham college, gresham lecture, gresham history, histroy, european history, modern histroy, military history, history of war, 20th century history, first world war, first world war lecture, ww1, world war 1, ypres, somme, thesomme, jutland, the somme, war studies, david stenson, overview, World War I (Military Conflict), History (TV Genre), Germany

Id: dMEFg_-26Ms

Length: 57min 34sec (3454 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 25 2014